Pope Francis’ Comments on Contraception Are Not Good Enough
Statement from Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, Vice President of Programs
Pope Francis’ comments about access to abortion and contraception in the context of the Zika epidemic fail to recognize women’s reproductive rights as human rights, and the health and lifesaving benefits of ensuring access to contraceptives.
Pope Francis’ comments negate the work of the thousands of mainstream faith-based NGOs who are already working to expand access to contraception for the 225 million women in the developing world who need it. Faith-based organizations are key healthcare providers and advocates, delivering as much as 40% of primary health care services, including reproductive, maternal and newborn care in regions like sub-Saharan Africa.
Complications from pregnancy are a leading cause of death for women of reproductive age in the developing world, especially for adolescent girls. By reducing unintended pregnancies, it is estimated that access to contraception alone leads to as much as a 30% decrease in maternal and child mortality. These are lives that need no epidemic or “special circumstance” to be saved. Access to contraception is and should be a fundamental right—no matter where a woman lives.
PAI stands with the faithful who continue to be at the front lines of primary and reproductive health care and who see no conflict between the health and life-saving benefits of contraception and their faith.
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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For over 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.
Today, PAI congratulates Gayle Smith on her confirmation as Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). We welcome the expertise Ms. Smith brings in global development and humanitarian assistance, and we look forward to working with her to support our shared global health and development objectives.
The world is facing an extraordinary time of conflict. It is more critical than ever that we work together to champion women’s reproductive rights and access to care. Crises in the Middle East, most notably Syria and Iraq, as well as in North Africa, have forced thousands of refugees to flee to neighboring countries and Europe for safe harbor. Violence against women, especially rape as a weapon of war, has added its own brand of shame to these, and other conflicts, and acutely impacts women’s health. These are issues Ms. Smith must confront immediately.
PAI also hopes to work with Ms. Smith to persuade President Obama to correct the administration’s longstanding misinterpretation of the Helms Amendment which needlessly prohibits access to vital care and services for women overseas who need an abortion because of rape or incest, or because they face a life-threatening pregnancy. This is a broken policy that obstructs the work of our partners around the globe, including providers, who are delivering quality care to millions in need.
We look forward to working with Ms. Smith and USAID in our continued efforts to champion women’s sexual and reproductive rights and close the gaps in women’s reproductive health care—a vital step in promoting health, women’s empowerment, democracy and stability worldwide.
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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.
Last week, the United States Agency for International Development released the 2015 edition of the Acting on the Call: ending preventable child and maternal deaths report. PAI commends the agency for recognizing the vital role family planning plays in “[continuing] to drive down both maternal and child mortality by enabling families to achieve healthy timing and spacing of births.” This report affirms our belief that we must prioritize funding for universal access to reproductive health services, including contraceptive services.
The Acting on the Call report documents the agency’s progress toward saving 15 million children’s lives and 600,000 women’s lives by 2020. To achieve these results, USAID is focusing on 24 countries—primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia—where 70 percent of maternal deaths worldwide occur and half of the unmet need for family planning is found.
Acting on the Call credits expansion of access to family planning services as a key factor in countries’ improved health outcomes, citing estimates indicating that the increased use of family planning services to prevent unintended pregnancies leads to decreases in child and maternal death by 25% and 30%, respectively. The report also references research by the Guttmacher Institute noting that although family planning services fall short of need in all developing regions, for every dollar invested in family planning, $1.47 is saved in maternal and newborn health care.
In order to advance quality care and save the lives of women and children, integrated family planning services must be part of the equation. PAI is proud to work with advocates around the globe to strengthen and monitor the quality of family planning programs. We applaud USAID for supporting critical investments in reproductive health services, which enable women, youth, and couples to prevent unintended and high-risk pregnancies and help to achieve the goal of ending preventable child and maternal deaths; and call upon the President to request additional funding for FP/RH for the coming fiscal year to make that goal a reality.
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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.
Today, PAI marks International Youth Day with the release of a new report, The Road Ahead for Young People and Family Planning. This report examines where young people are represented in the budgeted activities within governments’ costed implementation plans (CIPs) and whether these activities are the most effective for increasing young people’s access to contraception. Most of the world’s young people do not have access to basic sexual and reproductive health care and information, and nearly one in five girls in the developing world will become pregnant before the age of 18. This undercuts health and wellbeing, education and other opportunities for the largest-ever generation of young people.
The first report, which is part of an ongoing series, looks at the CIPs of five countries: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Nigeria. CIPs give countries a clear path to address family planning goals, make progress on commitments, and improve family planning knowledge and access to methods. The funding—or lack thereof—of effective programming for young people in countries’ CIPs reveal whether youth are prioritized and help predict what family planning services for them will look like in the coming years.
“In addition to providing a roadmap for funding family planning activities, costed implementation plans serve as a litmus test for advocates to gauge the extent to which policymakers are living up to their commitments to young people,” said report author Katelyn Bryant-Comstock, research associate at PAI.
“Many gaps remain in allocation of funding for effective youth family planning programming. We will need sustained advocacy to ensure that governments are prioritizing investment in young people as part of their implementation of the sustainable development agenda.”
In early August, world leaders reached a consensus on the new sustainable development agenda, which calls for ensuring comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education and services for all, increasing gender equality, and improving access to economic opportunity. Without fulfilling the sexual and reproductive rights of young people, the achievement of these goals is impossible.
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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.
PAI applauds the champions in the U.S. Senate who blocked attempts this week to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), one of the nation’s most critical providers of quality, affordable sexual and reproductive health services for women.
It is outrageous that access to vital services like contraceptive services, cervical cancer screening, and STD testing for millions of women is threatened by the unethical tactics of an organization whose mission is to shutdown PPFA.
The attacks on Planned Parenthood and the threat to its federal funding prove once again those who oppose a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her pregnancy are not just opposed to abortion. They are also fundamentally opposed to a woman’s right to contraception—and any ability she has to take charge of her fertility. As PPFA President Cecile Richards has pointed out, “If you’re concerned about what’s going on, you should release all [the videos] at once. Leaking one at a time, that’s politics.” Eliminating federal funding for PPFA would mean contraceptive access, particularly for low-income women and those in hard-to-reach areas, would be drastically reduced, if not erased.
PAI stands with Planned Parenthood because women’s health should not be held hostage to politics. Since its inception, PPFA has been a vocal partner and advocate in expanding health and rights not only for women in the United States, but also for women overseas, whose health and well-being are also affected by U.S. policies. We call on lawmakers to put anti-woman rhetoric aside and to be guided by the clear evidence on PPFA’s positive impact on women’s health and well-being. Too many lives depend on it.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Charlotte Cooper.
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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.
ORGANIZATIONS TO OBAMA: STOP BLOCKING ABORTION ACCESS TO RAPE VICTIMS AND WOMEN WITH LIFE-THREATENING PREGNANCIES
Today, PAI joins 70 other reproductive rights and human rights organizations in urging President Obama to take overdue action to protect the rights and health of women overseas who are survivors of rape, incest, or who are facing a life-threatening pregnancy.
Currently, the Helms Amendment prohibits the use of U.S. foreign assistance funds for abortions “as a method of family planning.” However, the Obama administration has misapplied the law by prohibiting U.S. government funds from being used to provide safe abortion care even in instances unrelated to family planning—cases where a woman has become pregnant due to rape or incest, or is facing a pregnancy that endangers her life.
The stern letter from the 71 organizations to the administration comes on the eve of the president’s trip to Kenya and Ethiopia—two countries impacted by the misapplication of the law—where abortion is legal in some or all of these cases.
“We want the president to understand the real impact of Helms on women’s lives when he visits Kenya and Ethiopia,” said Jonathan Rucks, director of U.S. government relations at PAI.
“Not only is the policy reprehensible, it undermines our own global health investments by restricting access to safe abortion, and is a primary barrier to women seeking the care they need.”
An estimated 289,000 women die each year in developing countries from pregnancy-related causes, and millions more suffer debilitating injuries. The majority of these deaths are preventable, particularly from unsafe abortion, a leading cause of maternal deaths.
According to PAI President Suzanne Ehlers, “The Obama administration should not stand between women and life-saving medical care, especially in countries where access is already often limited. The stakes are simply too high.”
Since last year, PAI has tracked every second of presidential inaction on the Helms Amendment through the website www.helmshurts.com to call attention to the urgency of the issue.
Read the letter from PAI and the 70 other organizations here.
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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.
A new $1 million fund is helping faith-based family planning advocates improve contraceptive access in their countries. The fund, called Faith Plus Family Planning, is an initiative of PAI. The fund provides faith-based organizations in the developing world with small grants and technical support to partner with governments on providing quality family planning and reproductive health services.
An estimated 225 million women in developing countries want to delay or prevent pregnancy but are not using modern contraception. In many of these countries, faith-based organizations are key healthcare providers and advocates, delivering a significant proportion of primary health care services, including reproductive, maternal and newborn care. In sub-Saharan Africa, faith-based organizations provide as much as 40 percent of health services. These organizations also hold a special place in their societies, bringing credibility and moral authority to policy discussions. Yet, they frequently lack adequate support and investment—especially as vocal advocates for family planning. Faith Plus Family Planning aims to rectify this imbalance:
“While the conversation in the United States around faith and contraception is increasingly polarized, the fact is women of faith want and use birth control,” said PAI President and CEO Suzanne Ehlers.
“We have been inspired by our faith-based partners in places like sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, who see the critical importance of these issues to women’s health and well-being.”
Peter Munene, international program coordinator of the Faith to Action Network in Kenya, described the fund as necessary: “Faith groups are already at the heart of their communities, but we often lack resources. This fund will help us turn our expertise into real action.”
By 2018, Faith Plus Family Planning expects to mobilize new funding and increase global and national commitments to family planning. The fund is now accepting applications. For more information, visit http://www.pai.org/faith.
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PAI champions policies that put women in charge of their reproductive health. We work with policymakers in Washington and our network of partners in developing countries to remove roadblocks between women and the services and supplies they need. For 50 years, we’ve helped women succeed by upholding their basic rights. To learn more, visit pai.org.